Final Reflection
The timing of this post coincides with a time when the world has just introduced GPT4, and it’s rather exciting. Just this week, as I prepared our workshop agenda, I began reflecting on some of the highlights of this past week as we dove into understanding the planning required for implementing change. One particular area that stood out for me was “Group A’s” toolkit (Gamella, 2023), where they discuss phycological safety; this is an area that we have been exploring as a company and recently developed a series of anonymous surveys to provide to staff throughout the year as an opportunity to capture team members feelings about employee fit, workload, expectations, skill utilization and the level of support required and provided to understand and deliver on projects. Surveys are used in other contexts as well; Moskel (2013) looks at the complicated nature when trying to evaluate the quality of the experience using student feedback captured using surveys; though complex, the author admits there is value in understanding course satisfaction according to the student. It appears valuable to compare Moskel’s comments about student surveys to the staff surveys used in my work environment to highlight opportunities for strategic decisions, training and reward opportunities, and planning initiatives that may be beneficial to improve course design and staff outcomes (2013).
The growth of our leadership to move towards a more reflective leadership practice is evident in our conscious effort to improve workplace belonging and physiological safety; Castelli (2016) views this style as being more intuitive in its leadership characteristics. In my earlier post, I identified inspiring, forward-looking, and caring as top attributes I value, now and after evaluating a considerable amount of research and perspectives on leadership, change and planning, I would also add ‘supportive’ to this list to account for inclusivity, stakeholder engagement and being conscious of a team needs and perspectives. These are the leadership skills that I personally find necessary in my context and when attempting to implement change in any work or learning type environment. Our leadership team can leverage these relationships and some of Kotter’s as we progress through transitions, such as better engagement with stakeholders, creating and communicating visions, demonstrating value, and by understanding and asking questions (Al-Haddad & Kotnour, 2015). Creating and maintaining phycological safety has been previously elusive, but now it seems that with the appropriate planning, a framework and a goal, not only does this become clearer and graspable, but it can be measured, proven, iterated, improved and redesigned for an even more significant impact and with an approach that uses data to inform its decisions which becomes not only more feasible but sustainable in the long run.
References
Al-Haddad, S., & Kotnour, T. (2015). Integrating the organizational change literature: A model for successful change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 28(2), 234-262. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOCM-11-2013-0215
Castelli, P.A. (2016), “Reflective leadership review: a framework for improving organisational performance”, Journal of Management Development, Vol. 35 No. 2, pp. 217-236. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMD-08-2015-0112
Gamella, J., Gerov, M., Logal, E., & Yardley, L. (2023). Are educators ready to implement ChatGPT to enhance learning. https://www.canva.com/design/DAFc2mEOCLY/MsoV6oBkj-fxiVjy05-1kw/view?utm_content=DA[%E2%80%A6]mpaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=publishsharelink#1
Moskal, P., Dziuban, C., & Hartman, J. (2013). Blended learning: A dangerous idea? Internet and Higher Education, 18, 15–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.IHEDUC.2012.12.001
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